Can I just snip off a zoa polyp?

[NoahLikesFish]

Truly depends on an individual's immune system. Some people die from bee stings, eating peanuts or coming in contact with latex products. Always use protection (sounds like health class in high school ) … being careful should be all the protection you need.

My friend one time got cut while fragging a zoa no gloves and he didn’t feel anything

 

[Cell]

Yes, you can snip it just fine.

 

[NoahLikesFish]

I only know aptasia x but other aptasia things or mabye kalkwasser would work

 

[Jon's Reef]

Put on some gloves, use a new scalpel and cut the mat, then peel up the zoa. If you are paranoid, put a syphon tube near the area and have it suck the water as you work.

 

[Sharkbait19]

If you don’t already, I’d run carbon to help filter out potential toxins.

 

[dedragon]

Yeah u will crash ur tank and you will probably die too if you do that

Lol, crash the tank from fragging one zoa polyp? not gonna happen. This is entirely wrong. Just where gloves, glasses, mask. We dont even know what type of zoa as palys are more of the ones we worry about. Best to always err on the side of caution tho

 

[ReeferBean]

The only way is to entirely wrap your body with saran wrap. Cut a small hole in the plastic and run a hose outside so can breath.

Seriously though, just cover it with kalkwasser, or something similar. Or you can tape a blade to a siphon tube, scrape, and suck it out.

 

[Just John]

The only way is to entirely wrap your body with saran wrap. Cut a small hole in the plastic and run a hose outside so can breath.

Seriously though, just cover it with kalkwasser, or something similar. Or you can tape a blade to a siphon tube, scrape, and suck it out.

I only do the saran wrap thing on the weekend with my wife...

 

[Baldguy]

Cutting one zoa underwater will have no effect on your tank at all. I recently needed to remove well over a hundred paly's from a base rock. I tried prying the mat up with no luck. I ended up removing them with a wire brush. No effect on the tank other than a few zoas not fully opening for a few hours. My euphyllia did the same. No effect on fish and certainly no crash. I did not run carbon and did not do a water change. Out of water I would take precautions like eye protection.

 

[Biokabe]

Yeah, the worries about palytoxin are... I'm not going to say overblown, but misunderstood. Palytoxin is absolutely a dangerous substance, but it's much harder to actually get exposed to it. To start with, as others have said, most zoa species do not have appreciable levels of palytoxin in their flesh. Second, even if palytoxin is present, getting it from the flesh of the zoa into your body is a relatively difficult proposition. Most exposures that have escalated involve some form of aerosol delivery or mucus membrane exposure - inhalation (from boiled polyps), getting squirted in the eye, or getting palytoxin into an open wound. Palytoxin is a defensive measure to prevent predation rather than a hunting mechanism, so the polyps don't really have a good way to take the toxin from their flesh and give it to someone else. In the wild, the only time anything is exposed to palytoxin is when they eat a polyp loaded with palytoxin. In a tank environment, especially one with carbon and an active protein skimmer, it'll get diluted down and then filtered out before it can do any damage - assuming it's even present at all.

 

[JaimeAdams]

You know. You can kill other coral in a system by messing with a bunch of palythoa. Ive had it happen, not once but twice. Whether through palytoxin spreading in the water or allelopathy In not sure, but I've done it twice at the store. The main reason why we are removing palys from our home systems and store systems. Granted cutting a polyp or two probably won't do anything. Things like Captain Jerks/Woodstock Hippies, Pandoras, nuclear Greens/Purples, Mind Blowing. If you pull a chunk out of the tank and they are just oozing in slime good chance they are pretty toxic.

 

[mermaid_life]

Do you have a picture of the zoa? I have one that is a super spreader... =).... i cut the heads because I got tired of scraping and the only consequence is that my skimmer is low for a bit. I suction out the heads that i cut off so that they don't land somewhere else.

 

[Just John]

Do you have a picture of the zoa? I have one that is a super spreader... =).... i cut the heads because I got tired of scraping and the only consequence is that my skimmer is low for a bit. I suction out the heads that i cut off so that they don't land somewhere else.

I am not at home this weekend, but it's just a Bloodsucker that is going to end up shading out some smaller Scrambled Eggs. They have been growing to the size of at least a dime, so it will happen soon.

 

[deepseabc]

Removing one zoas shouldn't cause the tank to crash. The problem is you're going to have to keep doing this unless it truly is a colony of 1x zoa

 

[|Frank|]

One polyp shouldn't do anything. If you want to be cautious wear some goggles and a pair of gloves. I'm a nut and take zoa's off frags with out any protection at all. Just wash your hands really well afterwards or even take a shower. Now that being said I was talking with an employee at one of the LFS I frequent and he was cutting out palys and didn't wash his hands enough and touched his eye and was out of work for a month. He was showing me pictures of his eye and it made me cringe a lil not gonna lie. Made me rethink my method, but he was also fragging out a lot of palys.

 

[C. Eymann]

There have been a few studies done on zoanthus and some species of palythoa that have shown that there are only a select few species of palythoa have detectable concentrations of palytoxin and its analogues.
All samples collected of Zoanthus sp. showed undetectable concentration/ devoid palytoxin/PTLX.
"All zoas have palytoxin" is a big myth
even specimens of Palythoa mutuki tested in the study showed no concentration of palytoxin.

Palythoa heliodiscus and P. toxica are the two species that you need to be wary of.

However, should take proper precautions when handling any coral, palythoa or not, even if they are devoid of palytoxin /PTLX and its its analogues, there could be chemicals in other corals that possibly can be medically significant to certain people, esp if an allergic reaction occurs.